Episode 34: Baby Hiccups and Short Rows

Hello dear Knitters! Thank you joining us for episode 34! In this "in the classroom" podcast, Marcy and Kim share their knitting, present a research paper on short rows, revisit their year long goals from January and talk about a little bit of uber craftiness. Grab your knitting, a refreshing beverage, get comfortable and join us!

Episode 34 Audio

 

Pippa at 11 weeks old, what a baby doll!

What's in our Lesson Plan?

• On the PA System
• Show & Tell
• A research paper on short rows
• How are we doing on our year long goals? 
• We are uber crafty
• What's on our Black Board?

On the PA System

• We are co hosting the "Summer Stripe along CAL," along with 4 other lovely podcasts. Head on over to the group page on Ravelry to learn more about it and get striping! PS, there are some lovely prizes that you can win!
• Stash Dash is continuing and you can still get in on the fun. This year Kim is finally keeping track of her meterage and she's doing quite well! When we recorded she had a little over 7K meters and her goal is 10K. 

Show & Tell

Pippa in the Marian Dress.

Marcy has finished the Marian dress by Taiga Hilliard and it is gorgeous! It is for Pippa and the colors look great on her. She's a lucky baby girl! Marcy is continuing to work on her ...a hint of summer top by Isabell Kraemer. She is using Claudia Hand Painted Yarns Linen in the lemon ice and caribbean blue colors. She did have a little "hiccup" with this project. She ran out of one of her color ways and since it's older stashed yarn it is not easy to find. There were a few people on Ravelry that did have it, and one of them was kind enough to sell her a skein, but when it arrived it was the WRONG color! She is figuring out a way to make it work. ***Do you hear the cute baby hiccups during this portion of the podcast? 

Marcy has a new CO, the cancun boxy lace top. This adorable tee incorporates the Boxy sweater by Joji Locatelli and the cancun boxy lace top by Erin Kate archer. She is using Knit One, Crochet too Batiste yarn in the Gray color. Right now it is pretty much all she wants to work on!

Lace boxy, each of the stitch patterns are very addicting like strips.

Kim has labeled herself the "Boring Knitter," for this episode. She's been busy finishing things and hasn't cast on anything new and now she doesn't have much knitting! She is planning a "cast on party" for this weekend  because this is a ridiculous state of affairs! 

Afterthought Everything Sock- I'll separate for the toes at
the color change.

She did recently cast on the Afterthought Everything socks by Erica Kempf Broughton. This clever $2 pattern from Ravelry allows you to knit a very long tube (or 2, if you choose!) and do afterthought toes and heels later. This gives you lots of plain knitting time. Kim is not actually following the pattern, just using the smart idea because she needs sock knitting for travel, wait time and watching movies. She is using the discontinued yarn Kertzer On Your Toes 4 ply with Aloe Vera in the Teal print and unknown colorway.

Kim is also continuing to work on the "I'll never be finished," Flutter Sleeve Cardigan by Pam Allen. However, the 2 aren't getting along and the sweater is currently in a time out. I want to make it clear that the yarn and pattern are wonderful, this is user error!

Research Paper: Short Rows

Marcy recently encountered a new short row method and thought that it would be fun and informative for us to do a research paper on the super useful short rows. Short rows are used for vertical shaping and 3 D contouring in items such as sock heels, sleeve caps, the back top portion of sweaters and bust darts. There are many other uses for them as well and once we know and understand more about them, we can swap one out for another and  also insert them into our knitting with wonderful results. Here are a few things that we covered:

• There are 3 "families" of short rows: 

1. The "trap a loop of working yarn across from the turning point" family which includes: Yarnover (YO)short rows, Wrap and Turn (W&T) short rows and Shadow wrap short rows.
2. The "turn and slip" family which includes: German and Japanese short rows, and
3. The Wrapless short row which is in a family all by itself.

• We used the following sources for our research: the online knitting zine, Knotions, the youtube channel by Roxanne Richardson and Interweave.com. We also used Wikipedia...and I'm going to let you look that up all by yourself!

  

  Our short row sample swatch. From the top: shadow wraps, yo's, wrapless, German,
  Japanese, W&T without picking up the wraps and W&T with picked up wraps. We like
  the Wrapless best, how about you?

2017 Year Long Goals

In our last episode, we decided to revisit the goals that we set in January and see how we are doing with them.  You can see the goals here. We are both doing pretty well with them (except for Kim and record keeping...oy!) Did you set any goals for the year in January? How are your's going? We can all revisit them in late December and see how we did and then get ready to set NEW goals for 2018!

Spinning BFL downstairs

My bulky bobbin for plying (BFL, Merino and Polwarth 2 ply.)
This ended up being almost 450 yards.

We are Uber Crafty

Kim has been spending a lot of time spinning late. She moved her spinning wheel downstairs and it has really impacted the amount that she is spinning. All of the skeins are 2 ply and the last 3 have been spun woolen in a supported long draw. Yay! More Stash Dash meterage!

What's on our Black Board?

The answer is that we don't know! Marcy is going back to work on 8/1 after 6 weeks of maternity leave and Kim has a trip and a birthday coming up. We will be back ASAP though and I'm certain that we'll have loads of knitting, spinning, weaving, crochet, sewing and yarn dyeing to share with you.

Thank you so much for joining us! We appreciate each and every one of you spending time with us. We hope that your knitting and making are going really well and that you're enjoying your Summer! Happy Knitting!